American Southwest 10 Day Road Trip Itinerary

Sedona, Grand Canyon and More!

September 2018 we planned out a road trip with this American Southwest 10 Day Itinerary. This was our first legit road trip and we learned a lot (with plenty more left to learn). There were trips before and after this, but this is where we started to think this was how we wanted to experience the world together

Our 10 Day Road Trip through the Southwest

This trip started with a 4 day visit to Los Angeles, which is why that’s our starting point. We would fly home from Las Vegas.

Days 1 – 3 Death Valley, Vegas & Sedona

Day 1: LA to Vegas, with a rushed Death Valley visit in order to catch our show in Vegas that night
Day 2: Vegas to Sedona
Day 3: Hiking in Sedona, glamping stop on the way to Grand Canyon

Days 4 – 6 Grand Canyon & Antelope Canyon

Day 4: Walk along South Rim
Day 5: Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point
Day 6: Early morning drive to Page, AZ for Antelope Canyon

Days 7 – 8 Bryce

Day 7: Early morning visit to Horseshoe Bend then onto Bryce Canyon
Day 8: Hiking into Bryce Canyon and attempting dark sky photography on Navajo Loop

Days 9 – 10 Zion & Vegas

Day 9: Bryce to Zion, where we realized we were going to see barely any of Zion
Day 10: Early morning hike in Zion, then on to Vegas and an evening flight home

Day 1: LA to Vegas

We hit the road pre-dawn with the intent of being able to spend some time in Death Valley. We had a list of stops to make along the way.

We underestimated the drive time. With just hitting Mesquite Flats, the Furnace Creek Visitor’s Center for the Annual Pass pick-up and then a run down to Badwater Basin, the drive time just to get to Vegas was almost 8 hours. Adding in the stops, we quickly realized we were going to have to rush our Death Valley visit, as we had a show in Vegas to catch.

We’d be back – 4 years later…(we’ll get to that in a later post)

American Southwest Road Trip Death Valley — “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat…”

On to dinner and a show!

Chicken & Cornbread Pancakes!!

Burlesque!

Where else would you wear this?

We stayed at the Aria Hotel, which is a beautiful. We rushed to clean up and get dressed before heading out to our dinner reservation…which after arriving and ordering a drink, we realized we didn’t like anything on the menu. We had time, so we opted to find something along the way.

Something turned out to be Tom’s Urban/Tom’s Watch Bar, which had the benefit of being right where the show was and they could seat us. Not fancy, but the chicken & cornbread pancakes were more delicious than it had any right to be. Years later, we would go back and hunt the restaurant down for this meal again!

Zumanity was a blast. We enjoy burlesque show’s in general, but that was super fun.

We were perhaps (definitely) slightly (completely) intoxicated at the point we left the show, and the walk back to the hotel was pretty entertaining. John lost his bearing and it took a bit before he admitted he got turned around and switched to google maps to navigate back to the hotel. The videos we have of this evening are pretty funny!

It wasn’t the end of the night though because Corinne hadn’t had a chance to play slots yet. She actually came out ahead and at this point, we wanted to stay up until 3am just so we could say we were up for 24 hours. It made sense at the time…as did the 2am room service we ordered.

Day 2: Vegas to Sedona

Shockingly, we were up and out by 10am the next morning and with a McDonald’s and Starbucks stop, we were on our way to Sedona.

This was a good 4 1/2 hour drive, and our intention was to just get to our hotel (Best Western), enjoy a fancier dinner than chicken & cornbread pancakes (however tasty), and go to bed early for our first real hiking.

The drive was uneventful, except for a freak snow/ice storm when going up through a pass west of Flagstaff, and we got to catch some gorgeous golden hour views from the balcony before heading to dinner at Cress.

American Southwest Road Trip
Sedona — Golden hour!

Day 3: Sedona Hiking

Another early morning, starting with the complimentary breakfast at the hotel and then check out.

We hiked to Devil’s Bridge in the morning and, while we didn’t have it to ourselves, the early morning start meant the foot traffic wasn’t so bad.

Ran back into town for lunch, which is a really good example of us being very new to this – nowadays we would have had a lunch option in the car. We ran back out to hike Boynton Canyon Trail, where we barely saw a soul.

Our stop for the night was at an AirBnb “Glampground” at Grand Canyon Junction. It was an awesome night, with wine, campfire chili and getting to meet other travelers from France & Switzerland

Day 4: Grand Canyon South Rim

We were at the South Rim pretty early, which helped avoid the crowds. Lot’s of squirrels begging for snacks, and people willing to feed them and risk a bite.

It was a pleasant walk from one end of the South Rim Trail to the other, and John figured out that we’d have to hit Bright Angel very early the next morning to avoid dying from the heat coming back up from Plateau Point…

Important note: the dining options are pretty limited outside the South Rim gate, and there wasn’t a close grocery store to be able to get stuff to make dinner. Finding ourselves in this predicament by surprise highlights our road trip travel newbie status at this point.

American Southwest Road Trip Grand Canyon — Top of Bright Angel Trail…you can make out the trail to Plateau Point. Goal for the next day…

Day 5: Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point

We woke up at 4am in order to start down the trail between 5 and 5:30am.

This is a 12 mile out and back hike, with over 3000ft climb coming back out. The last 3 miles are where you put the real work in, and it was probably the most challenging hike we’ve ever done. We completed it in about 7 hours.

The views were gorgeous, especially in the early morning light. It gave John a bug to do a Rim to Rim (someday…)

Our reward at the end (after Corinne had a good cry in the car) was a burger and fries at the nearby dining hall.

We had an easy night back at the AirBnB, taking the time to catch up on laundry and reorganize, and we had another early morning the next day

American Southwest Road Trip Grand Cayon — If you feel insignificant up on the Rim, try going down into the thing

Some tips when hiking into the canyon via Bright Angel on the South Rim:

Take the heat warnings seriously. Due to the air compression, the bottom of the rim can be 20-30 degrees (F) hotter than the top. The early start time for this was more to minimize heat exposure than crowds

We each carried a full 3 liter Camelback, and refilled in Havasupai Garden’s (formerly Indian Gardens)

We wore sunproof long sleeved shirts and wide brimmed hats, as we knew we’d be hitting noon sun on the way up

Pace yourselves on the climb back out. It’s 6 miles back to the top from Plateau Point, and the last 3 are all climbing. We blew a lot of our steam on the first ‘easy’ stretch, and by the time we got to the last 1.5 miles, we were struggling

Day 6: Antelope Canyon

We had booked an 8:30am tour of Antelope Canyon with Adventurous Antelope Canyon Photo Tours, and it was a 3 hour drive – so back up and on the road before dawn.

Fun fact: Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings…but the Navajo Reservation, where the the canyon and tour operator is, does.

So, we had this fun moment where it seemed like we were showing up late. John actually had planned this out way ahead of time, but he forgot about it at this point, and was just following the instructions that Past John had left him. Current John couldn’t explain this to Corinne, which meant there was a fair amount of tension in the car until we arrived and found out that Past John had done them a solid. We even had time to run into town and grab a coffee before the tour. Who needs coffee when you think you’re having a crisis?

Antelope Canyon is a fantastic experience, and photos don’t really do the experience exploring them justice. The guides were great and even set up our camera settings to get the optimal photos.

American Southwest Road Trip
Antelope Canyon

Fun in Page, Az

Well, not really fun IN Page, but it is centrally located to Lake Powell and Horseshoe Bend.

We made a point to visit Horseshoe Bend first thing in the morning, again to avoid the crowd, as well as to have the sun behind us for the view.

Seeing Lake Powell was by drive-by, but it was an incredible view

American Southwest Road Trip
Horseshoe Bend — Horseshoe Bend

Lake Powell

Day 7: Bryce Canyon (Part 1)

We had a very full day on Day 7, after the 2 1/2 hour drive from Page to Bryce.

We ended up at the park during prime visiting time, so we used the shuttle service to get us into the park. We hiked along the Rim Trail before heading down into it (Tropic Trail & Navajo Loop). This still stands out as one of Corinne’s favorite National Parks

American Southwest Road Trip Bryce Cayon — That Hoodoo Voodoo

American Southwest Road Trip Bryce Canyon — John was trying to get artistic with this one

American Southwest Road Trip Navajo Loop — John’s facial expressions will gradually get better

American Southwest Bryce Canyon — We were were nervous about going down into another canyon…but this wasn’t so bad

We stayed at a Cabin style AirBnB about 30 minutes outside the park and when we were done exploring Bryce, we headed that way to check-in. This would be ‘home’ for the next 2 nights.

For the 1st night, we had another dinner date – a lovely restaurant called Stone Hearth Grill that John had booked about a month in advance, just for the view.

After dark, we headed out to the Dark Sky Ranger Telescope Tour. Fun educational presentation, and then several high end telescopes already trained on some key celestial bodies (Mars, ect). It was REALLY cold that night (the whole thing was outdoors)

The view

John taking in a beer with his view

Day 8: Bryce Canyon (Part 2)

This turned into a ‘rest day’. Over time, we would learn to build these in to our itineraries, but at this point, they just occurred naturally – although not necessarily making for the most efficient use of time. Frankly, at this stage, we were approaching some measure of exhaustion.

So, our only real plan was to head into Bryce at dusk to try to get a dark sky photo. Corinne had bought a Nikon D3400 expressly for this purpose, but we really hadn’t quite figured it out.

We accessed the Navajo Loop and just went down a switch back or two, and managed to get this one. (The line at the bottom right was a passing plane)

Day 9: Zion

The hard truth is that when we went to Zion, we were – in many ways – over the trip. We had a lot to learn about pacing and building in recoup time to keep ourselves fresh for all the experiences we were planning.

Coming in the east entrance, we hit a total traffic jam at the Zion Mt Carmel Tunnel. By chance, there was a parking spot along the shoulder, right at the Canyon Overlook Trail, so we took that as the universe showing us directions.

Great views of the Valley from the overlook.

American Southwest — Corinne had fun going over this thing

Once the traffic cleared, we proceeded straight to Springdale where we were staying at a Hampton Inn. We got there too early to check-in, and so opted to relax by the pool, where Corinne promptly fell asleep.

Our first time to Utah, we learned that you couldn’t order drinks unless you were eating, which was fine, since we went to the Switchback Grill next to the hotel for both lunch AND dinner. We were clearly getting lazy at this point.

We found an easy hike to do just inside the park for early the next morning and then called it a night. Suffice to say, we still feel like we have yet to really explore Zion.

Day 10: Zion to Vegas (and home)

We were well rested by this point, and got up with the sun to hike the Watchman’s Trail, which picks up right by the Visitor’s Center by the South Entrance.

Very pleasant and easy hike.

It was under 3 hours from Springdale to Las Vegas, and we were able to get there by mid afternoon. Our flight was later that evening, so we stopped at the Bellagio for lunch and Corinne hit the slots.

She also hit the slots at the airport later that evening (there is a theme here).

This wasn’t a ‘perfect’ trip by any means, but we learned some key lessons:

We enjoy roadtripping and essentially carrying our world with us by vehicle from place to place

We needed to invest much more in upfront planning . Some critical planning – like considering temperature for going into the Grand Canyon – didn’t happen till the day prior

Start your days early; less crowds, less issues with parking and often better pictures

Food! We literally made no plans for how meals were going to happen. Even staying at AirBnB’s, where we had the option to cook, we didn’t take advantage of this enough

American Southwest 10 Day Road Trip Itinerary

Sedona, Grand Canyon and More!

Our 10 Day Road Trip through the Southwest

Days 1 – 3 Death Valley, Vegas & Sedona

Days 4 – 6 Grand Canyon & Antelope Canyon

Days 7 – 8 Bryce

Days 9 – 10 Zion & Vegas

Day 1: LA to Vegas

On to dinner and a show!

Day 2: Vegas to Sedona

Day 3: Sedona Hiking

Day 4: Grand Canyon South Rim

Day 5: Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point

Some tips when hiking into the canyon via Bright Angel on the South Rim:

Day 6: Antelope Canyon

Fun in Page, Az

Day 7: Bryce Canyon (Part 1)

Day 8: Bryce Canyon (Part 2)

Day 9: Zion

Day 10: Zion to Vegas (and home)

This wasn’t a ‘perfect’ trip by any means, but we learned some key lessons:

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